7
Marlow
I noticed that she had not left her coat at reception.
‘Would you like me to take your coat?’ I enquired.
‘No,’ she said with a smile. ‘I’m fine.’
‘I can turn the heat up if you are cold.’
‘No, no,’ she said quickly, a faint flush creeping up her neck and into her cheeks. ‘I’m fine. Really.’ She gave me a lingering look.
‘All right. So how have you been?’ I asked politely.
‘Good. Very good.’
‘Any new memories?’
‘No, but I’d like to remember the day my mother died.’
I frowned, but I nodded. I didn’t know what lay in store that day, but I could not protect her forever. Eventually, once I found out who the white owl was and why she was so terrified of it, I planned on letting her remember everything, the good and the bad.
We went into the room next door and she made herself comfortable on the zero gravity chair while I fiddled about with the necessary buttons and switches.
‘Ready?’ I asked her.
She nodded and I smelt her perfume.
I took a seat beside her and went through the induction procedure. It was now much shorter as I had already created the pathways for her hypnotized state. When she was in a deep trance I instructed her to go to her special place again. I waited for a few seconds.
‘Are you there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ I said planning to take her to that day next. And for some unknown reason my gaze skimmed her body and found a hole in her tights. I stared at it. Her skin was very pale in the blue light. I found myself blinking. Then I did what I had never done before. I put my finger on her exposed skin. My breath came ragged and trembling. What the hell?
I could not believe the potency and the force of my desire for her. I was powerless in its wake. The more I denied it, the mightier it became until this. Me touching her while she was lying on my chair totally helpless. And still my finger did not lift away. Instead it moved slightly. My finger was stroking her! Her skin was like the finest, smoothest silk. For heart-stopping seconds my finger remained as if unable, or more likely unwilling, to be parted from her skin. Then I snatched it away and closed my eyes. My hands came up to my head, my fingers raking through my hair. I stayed with my fingers clawed on my scalp while my brain went ape shit on me.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Everything I knew with total certainty about myself was in the garbage can. And then an ice-cold shudder ran through me. Very slowly I turned my head to the left. An unblinking red light was watching me, its regard unnervingly steady. I was recording this. All this was being documented. I felt so ashamed and confused. I felt like a pervert. I stood up and walked to the recording machine. I stood with my finger poised. All I had to do was to press erase. I should erase it. Here was enough evidence to brand me as a sexual molester. I would never work again if this came out. If I erased it, nothing of real importance would be lost. I had not yet begun her journey. I stood there another moment.
And then I put my finger on the erase button.
I pressed record and went to my chair. I remembered my priest in my church, his eyes rheumy and wandering around the congregation: ‘The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’
I sat down on the chair.
‘I want you to go to the day your mother died.’
Her eyes moved under her lids.
‘Are you there?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice was soft and distressed.
‘What do you see?’